The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

If the above quote (from HP Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”) is correct, then the dread entity known as Google is destined to “open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

Enter Tomorrow’s Cthulhu. The new anthology features my short story “The Five Hundred Days of Ms. Between” and many more. The book’s blurb says:

Super science. Madness. Transhumanism.

This is the dawn of posthumanity. Some things can’t be unlearned.

Gleaming labs whir with the hum of servers as scientists unravel the secrets of the universe. But as we peel away mysteries, the universe glances back at us. Even now, terrors rise from the Mariana Trench and drift down from the stars. Scientists are disappearing—or worse. Experiments take on minds of their own. Some fight back against the unknown, some give in, some are destroyed, and still others are becoming… more.

You can purchase the Kindle edition of the anthology right now. You can also pre-order soft cover and hardcover editions of the book over at Broken Eye Books. Bellow is teaser of my story. It’s my first crack at a time travel story . . . or is it?

“The Five Hundred Days of Ms. Between” (excerpt)
by Joshua Alan Doetsch

Can’t feel my legs. So I slither along the ground, toward the audient window, humming that song. I hear the wet-velcro rip of the thousand hands rending flesh. I see her through the window. That mocking grin.

The first thing Ms. Between said to me was, “I’m a mad woman with a lab.” The second thing she said was that I could leave at any time with no obligation. The third thing was that there could be no questions—questions would cause her and her offer to evaporate. I believed absolutely in that, so she handed me the murder weapon.

No, wait. That’s not the beginning. I don’t remember exactly when it began—some time after Ms. Between came out of our touchscreens. Everyone has seen her Tech Talk videos and all their terrible wonder. Yet nobody knows where she broadcasts from. No one ever meets Ms. Between.

But I did.

She provided no name, only an address. She said he had done a bad thing. Said he deserved it. I swallowed all of my wriggling questions.

The Nameless Man looked old and kindly. He had one eye and smiled as he slept. Oh how I wish he had tossed with moaning guilt. Everyone sleeps more soundly since the symbionts.

Hesitating, I stood over the Nameless Man’s bed for an hour. With the speed of a carnivorous plant, I took out the dagger. It was carved from bone and coated in lacquer that gave it a greenish hue. I raised the dagger over my head and held it there, squeezing the leather-wrapped handle. Another half hour. My arm ached. I bit my inner cheek and tasted copper. Ms. Between had said I could leave at any time.

No, Val, Lailah pleaded from inside me. You must not do this.

Lailah is my dedicated symbiont.

“Have to,” I rasped.

The Nameless Man startled. His eye opened. I brought the dagger down. I’ve never been good with knives. It took many tries. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” I said until I was nothing but tears and snot.

“Lailah,” I said when it was over, “now.”

Her coils tightened in my gut. No, Val.Don’t make me. Don’t make me.

“We have to, Lailah. Please.”

I felt her sigh and shiver. Her tendril came out the port in my wrist to snake down into the Nameless Man’s mouth. His symbiont would not live long without him, but it might have stored recent memories in synaptic backup. Through Lailah, I felt its distress. Not a dedicated symbiont, not even a thought interface. How lonely. Just a silent worm. But I don’t judge. I recognize my privilege.

As Lailah devoured the other symbiont, I put the wet dagger into a plastic bag. Ms. Between had handed it to me just before telling me the rules of time travel. It was preposterous. Time travel couldn’t exist.

Finn remembers. The dark woods. The chair of bone and horn. He sat on Santa’s cold lap. The blue-black skin. Moon-glow eyes. The clotted beard. That distended belly that shook like things writhing in jelly.

A while back, Chaosium held a Kickstarter campaign for an updated version of Horror on the Orient Express. One of the stretch goals was an anthology called Madness on the Orient Express (edited by James Lowder). I wrote a story for that and it looks like the book is coming together now. Here’s a final list of stories/authors. A lot of names I’m excited to accompany. More as it develops.

“A Great and Terrible Hunger” by Elaine Cunningham
“A Finger’s Worth of Coal” by Richard Dansky
“There is a Book” by Dennis Detwiller
“Stained Windows” by Joshua Alan Doetsch
“The Lost Station Horror” by Geoff Gillan
“Bound for Home” by Christopher Golden
“Demons Dreaming” by Cody Goodfellow
“La Musique de l’Ennui” by Kenneth Hite
“Inscrutable” by Robin D. Laws
“Daddy, Daddy” by Penelope Love
“The Pattern” by Ari Marmell
“Bitter Shadows” by Lisa Morton
“On the Eastbound Train” by Darrell Schweitzer
“Black Cat of the Orient” by Lucien Soulban
“The Face of the Deep” by C.A. Suleiman
“The God Beneath the Mountain” by James L. Sutter

I was (and am) a huge fan of the podcasted audio drama Wormwood: A Serialized Mystery. I listened to that show through a transitional period of my life. I started during a time when I, in possession of a fresh Masters Degree, was back living with my parents, working a soul-draining graveyard shift at 7-11, and (with no other expenses) still not making the monthly minimums on my debt.

And I continued listening to the show when I landed a job writing for a video game company and was very suddenly thrust from Chicago to Oslo, Norway. The show was one of the familiar things I brought with me when I jumped far out into the big bad world. I followed the exploits of the occult detectives Sparrow & Crowe (you can now follow them in comic book form as well). In more than one culture, sparrows and crows are psychopomps, beings who guide others between worlds. It was no different for me.

One great thing about the internet (and you have to take in the great things, in the face of YouTube comments), is it sometimes gives you the chance to keep in touch with the creators of the things you love. And somewhere along the way, I got to collaborate with them. Twice! First was for a prose Sparrow & Crowe anthology, Weird Winter Stories (containing my story “How to Kill Santa”).

And now round two! I give you Weird Romance. It is another Sparrow & Crowe anthology, this time centering on theme of the strangeness of love. There is a lot of variety here, a lot of twisted gems, fathoming the depth of the oddity that is l’amour. My story is “Harlow’s Fairytale,” and I’m rather proud of it, rather fond of the character Harlow. You should sit down and read her tale. There’s a frog prince…but it’s not very Disney.

I’m a Halloween boy, born and bred in the pumpkin patch, but I’ve always loved the Winter holidays. The mix is not so incongruous…or rather the incongruity works. Winter/Yule/Christmas and all the rest have had an affair with Weird Tales for a long time–from Charles Dickens to The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was not so long ago that winter was a deadly time of year. The harvest is behind; the spring is impossibly far ahead; the nights are long and dark–time to gather round the fire and tell strange stories.

I had the good fortune of working with the creators of Sparrow & Crowe on an anthology of the winter weird, featuring their eponymous occult investigators. If you like to see more of the odd duo, check out their comic book (try out the free software on Comixology–I’d never thought I’d enjoy reading a comic on a phone, but it’s pretty sweet). Also see Sparrow and Crowe in their original appearance as part of the podcasted audio drama Wormwood: A Serialized Mystery (free to download from the website or iTunes).

Best of all, all proceeds from our anthology of winter weird goes to a charity: 826LA.

Check out my story, “How to Kill Santa.” It mixes Christmas, Santa, Norse undead known as the draugr, and hagfish! It’s Steven King’s It meets A Christmas Carol and a dash of Goonies.